Spanish Songs in the Basement of Vienna's Mozarthaus

A friend sent an email telling me that a free concert was being held on Wednesday (April 4) at the Bösendorfer Room of the Mozart House, featuring Spanish songs for voice, piano, and guitar. Three things about the concert interested me:  First, it was in a venue that I had never seen. Second, it promised music with which I am unacquainted. Third, it was free. I decided to go.

The concert announcement described it was a “Galaconcert” that was the conclusion of a Master Course for Spanish songs and music. The brochure for this Master Course can be found at this site: http://www.tinteschuermann.org/ism/DOCS/Poster_CEV_black.pdf

Dr. Tintes-Shürmann  

This Master Course featured three instructors:

Dr. Helen Tintes-Shürmann (mezzo-soprano), an experienced opera singer who now teaches at the Vienna Conservatory and heads the International Spanish Music Center. [http://tinteschuermann.org/ism/ ] She has held master courses on Spanish song in the United States and China, as well as Vienna. Born in North Dakoka, she has a Doctor of Music from Northwestern University. She started her study of Spanish music as a pianist at Minnesota State University.  http://tinteschuermann.org/biography/

Jonas Skielboe

Alejandro Picó-Leonis (pianist), who was born in Spain and completed his music education with an MA from Hunter College of CUNY. In 2002, he made his debut at Carnegie Hall and has played at other prestigious venue throughout the world, including Vienna. He has recorded several CDs. Some of his music can be heard at this site: http://www.picoleonis.com/

Jonas Skielboe (guitarist), who was born in Denmark. He has studied guitar with several European masters and now plays professionally throughout Europe. He specializes in the music of Spain and Latin America. See http://jonasskielboe.com/web/Home.html

The concert was performed largely by four women who attended the master class, plus one young pianist. They were accompanied during the first half of the concert by Skielboe on guitar and during the second half by Picó-Leonis on piano (a Bösendorfer).  The concert also had guest appearances by Dr. Tintes-Schürmann and baritone David Robinson, an opera singer and professor from Texas.

The Bösendorfer Room provided an intimate setting for the concert. It is located in the deep basement of the Mozart House, which is a five-story building constructed in the eighteenth century.  The building’s name comes from fact that it contains the only Vienna apartment in which Mozart lived that still exists. He had a large apartment in this building, which is a few steps from Stephenskirche, from 1784 to 1787. The first three floors of the building are now part of a Mozart museum. See more about the Mozarthaus at http://www.mozarthausvienna.at/en/

Bösendorfer Room in the Mozart House

The music venue is located in a deep vaulted basement constructed of brick.  It resembles many of the old Vienna Wine Cellars spread throughout the city. This large cellar has been nicely retrofitted to provide an attractive stage and good acoustics. It has seating for about seventy people. See http://www.boesendorfer.com/en/bosendorferhall.html

Maha Marrawi

The Master Course students were an international group. Their short bios, plus information about each of them on the internet, showed that three of the singers have professional careers with some noteworthy training, impressive accomplishments, and good experience. One of them, Maha Marrawi (mezzo-soprana) is a tousled redhead who was born in Syria. She earned a masters degree at Kunstuniversität Graz and has performed in several operas, including Franz von Suppés “Fatiniza.” This opera was recorded and released as a CD. 

 Two Austrian women, Manuela Leonhartsberger (mezzo-soprana) and Karin Wolf-Bauer (sopran) also are experienced as singers in festivals, concerts, and other events. Leonhartsberger sings at the Vienna Volkopera. This year she is singing the roles of Mercedes in Carmen and Kate Pinkerton in Madame Butterfly.  For more information about these two singers, see these sites: http://www.volksoper.at/Content.Node2/home/ensemble/17085135.php , https://www.facebook.com/manuela.leonhartsberger , and http://www.schubertsolisten.at/karin-biographie.htm .

Manuela Leonhartsberger

The fourth singer, Stephany Peña, from Miami, was a bit younger than the other three. In her early 20s, she is studying solo voice at the Vienna Conservatoriun and has experience singing at venues in the United States, Columbia, and Austria. In Fall 2012, she will be in the Choir of the Vienna State Opera during its tour of Japan.

All four of these singers had some very nice moments in this concert, displaying high quality voices and engaging personalities. It was a pleasure to be hearing them sing in a smaller venue, which, of course, is a wholly difference experience than sitting in the Konzerthaus or Musikverein. In these settings, somehow, the vulnerability of the singers and the complexity of their art are more apparent. Here, singing is not a technical exercise by a distance person, but an individual effort that depends on talent, personality, discipline, and training.

The young pianist, Edwin Zúniga Flores, merits special attention. He is fifteen years old, but has been performing since he was six. He came to Vienna when he was eight and has been studying, playing, and composing since then. His fluent playing of a lyrical excerpt from “La boda de Luis Alonso” by Gerónimo Giménez (1823-1894) was one of the highlights of the evening. This stoic young man seems to have the makings of a major talent.

Edwin Zúniga Flores

In all, twenty different excerpts from longer pieces or songs were sung and played during the concert. The composers included Federico García Lorca (1898-1936), Enrique Granado (1867-1916), Joaquín Rodrigo (1901-1999), Manueal de Falla (1876-1946), Xavier Montsalvatge (1912-2002), Alberto Ginastera (1916-1983), Joaquín Turina (1882-1949), Geróimo Giménez (1854-1923), Francisco Barbieri (1823-1894), José Serrano (1873-1941), Pablo Sorozábal (1897-1988), Federico Moreno Torroba (1891-1982), Ruperto Chapí (1851-1909), and Manuel Penella (1880-1939). I admit that I have never heard of these composers, and as far as I know, have never heard this music before, even though I should have.  

With the lack of wide-spread knowledge of Spanish composers and their music, the work of the International Spanish Music Center to train singers and other musicians to perform this music seems to be valuable. I appreciated the enjoyable evening of Spanish music provided through this Master Class and wish it – and all of the performers at the concert – good fortune in the future. I hope that through their efforts the music they sang becomes more widely appreciated and performed.

Grisly Results as the Song-of-the-Earth Jinx Strikes Again

Loyal readers of this blog will recall from my last post that in the past forty-something years I have attended (or tried to) three performances of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde (Song of the Earth) at Vienna’s Musikverein, and three times something has gone badly wrong. I feared that something untoward would also happen the fourth time I went to hear this music on Thursday. My fears were realized. The jinx lives on.

Things went so swimmingly at the beginning of the Thursday night concert that I thought my jinx had, at last, been lifted. At the last moment, I had avoided stehplatz (standing room) by scoring a ticket in the front row of the orchestra right seats. I found myself sitting on the podium directly behind the last row of violinists to the right of the conductor as he faces them. In fact, a couple of the violinists were sitting so close to me that I could reach out and dope slap them if they messed up.

My neighbors at the concert

The first part of the program was played smartly by the Munich Philharmonic with world famous Zubin  Mehta conducting. Mehta had made his Vienna conducting debut in March 1962, and he ranks among the world’s best. It was a treat to be facing the Meister, watching how he used gestures and facial expressions to lead the orchestra. 

The first piece was by Franz Schubert, likely because the Musikverein is celebrating its 200^th anniversary this year, and Schubert was there in its early years. The second piece was the Austrian premier of a composition by German Moritz Eggert (b. 1965), who was present to hear it played. Its title is “‘Puls’ for Grosses Orchester.” The opening of the composition grabs your attention, and it is easy to get caught up in the pulsating, vigorous music that fully uses all parts of the large orchestra. Not only do violinists and brass players work up a sweat, the tuba player, the harpists, and the percussionists are fully engaged in some strenuous playing. This music is a keeper.

The break came and memories of the jinx were fading. As I waited, I read through the lyrics of the six songs that comprise Das Lied von der Erde. With two experienced and highly praised singers engaged to sing these songs, my expectations were rising.

Waiting, Waiting

Then, strange things began to happen. The intermission seemed to stretch out much too long. The audience members came back to their seats, but the orchestra did not take the stage. After five minutes or so, a buzz was rising in the hall. At that point, a sad looking man came on stage to speak to the audience. Sitting behind him, I did not fully understand what he was saying, but the gist was this:  Torsten Kerl, the tenor who was to sing in Das Lied von der Erde, had, a few minutes earlier, a "breakdown" and would be unable to sing.  Dark murmurs arose from the audience.

This man, who I would guess is the manager of the Musikverein, continued to explain what was going to happen. They had contacted a substitute singer who had agreed to take on the role, and he was on his way to the Musikverein.  They had decided to proceed with the playing of Das Lied von der Erde in the following way:  Thomas Hampson, the baritone, would sing the first two songs for baritone, No. 2 Der Einsame in Herbst (The Solitary One in Autumn) and No. 4 Von der Schoenheit (Of Beauty). Then, there would likely be a break until the second singer was ready. He would then sing the songs for tenor, No. 1 Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde (Drinking Song to the Misery of the Earth), No. 3 Von der Jugend (Of Youth) and No. 5. Der Trunkene im Fruehling (The Drunkard in Spring). After that, Hampson would return for the final song, Der Abschied (The Farewell).

The man asked the audience for its patience and understanding. He said that nothing like this had happened before in his twenty-four years at the Musikverein.

The man with bad news speaks

The concert followed the announced plan. Hampson sang The Solitary One in Autumn, including the words:

I weep much in my solitude.
The autumn in my heart has lasted too long.
Sun of love, will you never shine again,
gently to dry my bitter tears?

Then he sang Of Beauty.  

I had been pleased to read in Hampson’s bio that he was born and raised in Washington State and had gone on to have a spectacular career as a concert singer. He had successfully sung Mahler’s work many times, and he was in good form this evening, even amid the turmoil surrounding the performance.

Waiting, waiting

When Hampson finished his first two songs, the sad man came out again to address the audience, saying that it would be at least ten minutes before the concert could resume. In fact, it was more than twenty minutes. Some of the musicians left the stage; others hung around talking, fiddling with their instruments, and reading magazines. A few members of the audience got their umbrellas and left.

After the long delay, the orchestra returned to their chairs and the audience to its seats. The sad man appeared for a third time and introduced the substitute singer, whose name met with the approval of much of the audience. He was Johan Botha, who often sings in Vienna State Operas’ Wagner productions. The sad man said that Botha had not sung the songs of Das Lied von der Erde for many years and had no practice singing them with the Munich Philharmonic. Then he again asked for patience and understanding as he walked, head down, from the stage.

Botha receives thunderous applause

Botha entered. He is a short, rather fat man with long sculptured hair and beard. I would describe him grisly (hint, see the title of this blog entry). He has a powerful, penetrating voice, which came nicely through the outstanding music in Drinking Song to the Misery of the Earth and The Drunkard in Spring. The Drinking Song includes this vivid ending:

Look down there!
In the moonlight, on the graves
crouches a wild, ghostly figure - It is an ape!
Hear how its howls resound piercingly
in the sweet fragrance of life!
Now take the wine! Now is the time - enjoy!
Empty the golden goblet to the bottom!
Dark is life, dark is death!

The drunkard starts:

If life is only a dream,
why then the misery and torment?
I drink until I can drink no more,
the whole, dear day!

And when I can drink no more,
because my stomach and soul are full,
I stagger to my door
and sleep very well!

It was engrossing to watch the old pro Mehta working with Botha to help him enter the music on the right note and at the right time. Mehta’s head was inches from Botha’s as he swung his baton, flicked glances at his musicians, and animatedly mouthed the words to the songs, especially emphasizing the words that followed seconds or minutes of music without words.

Conductor Zubin Mehta smiles at singer Botha

Botha easily won over the crowd with his efforts and the audience, breaking tradition, applauded after each song. Botha’s wonderful voice rewarded those who remained despite their dismay at the changes in the program and the long delays.

The concert ended successfully with the moving music and contemplative lyrics of Der Abschied.  The dark, stirring words of the song were sung well by baritone Hampson, including these:

Weary men go home,
to learn in sleep
forgotten happiness and youth.

He spoke, his voice was choked: My friend,
on this earth, fortune has not been kind to me!
Where do I go? I will go, wander in the mountains.
I seek peace for my lonely heart.
I wander to find my homeland, my home.
I will never stray to foreign lands.
Quiet is my heart, waiting for its hour!

At the end, Hampson led us down the lonely road of eternity:  ewig…ewig…ewig.

Hampson receives the applause of Mehta after The Farewell

The audience rewarded Mehta (who was visibly relieved that disaster had been averted), the two fine signers, and the marvelous Philharmonic orchestra with long and enthusiastic applause. There is no word about how the victim of my jinx, Torsten Kerl, is doing. All I can do is echo the manager of the Musikverein asking for his patience and understanding.  

The "Song of the Earth" Jinx

In the past half century, I have gone three times to hear Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde (Song of the Earth) played at Vienna’s Musikverein. Each time I have gone, something bad has happened. Tonight, with some trepidation, I am planning to go a fourth time to hear this music performed.  I keep wondering what will go wrong this time.

The first time I went to the Musikverein to hear Das Lied von der Erde (DLvdE) was in 1968 when I was an undergraduate student in Vienna and was able to get tickets to hear the Vienna Philharmonic play the music, conducted by no less than Leonard Bernstein. My seat was on the podium, sitting in a folding chair behind the musicians, facing the conductor.  To maximize seating for the concert, about five rows of such chairs had been placed on the left and right edges of the back of the podium.

The concert was a thrilling event, as you would expect with a world class orchestra, two talented singers, and a world-famous conductor playing some brilliant, though sometimes dark, music. The last movement – quite long – is entitled “Der Abschied,” the farewell. It ends with some very subdued, foreboding music, accompanying one of the singers who repeats the word “ewig” (forever or endless) many times; each time the word sounds more forlorn than the previous time it was sung.

The conclusion is engrossing, as one contemplates eternity with each tortured syllable. Or at least it was at this concert until a guy sitting in front of me on the podium, fell out of his chair, breaking the stillness with a huge clatter.  Initially I was afraid the guy had just gone to eternity; after he hopped up and resumed his seat – hundreds of pairs of eye following his every move, a part of me wished he had.

The second time I went to hear DLvdE performed was in late fall, 1971. I was back in Vienna as a graduate student and felt fortunate that a woman I had known – and dated a few times at the University of Arkansas -- had come to the city to visit for a few months. A blond, free spirited beauty (she was one of the “Razorback beauties” in the university’s 1970 yearbook), she accompanied me to hear a concert featuring DLvdE. This time, the concert went smoothly, featuring a strong team playing and singing the beautiful music. The problem came afterwards, when I and my date, along with a couple friends, went to the Café Hawelka, a hangout for students and intellectuals.

As usual, the café was crowded, and we shared a cramped table with a few other people. At the request of my date, I started translating the words to “Der Abshied,” the conclusion of DLvdE. When it was clear that my translation was not going well, an aristocratic-looking Austrian student sitting nearby offered to help. It didn’t help that he resembled your typical European male model. Soon he was staring into deeply her eyes, translating from German into English these words:

“Fortune was not kind to me in this world! Where do I go? I am departing, I wander in the mountains. I am seeking rest for my lonely heart. I am making my way to my home, my abode. I shall never stray far away. My heart is still and awaits its moment.

The beloved Earth blooms forth everywhere in spring, and becomes green anew! Everywhere and endlessly blue shines the horizon!”

She was lost before he got to the next words: “ewige….ewige…..ewige…….….” I didn’t see too much of her after that. She and the kind translator had a good time together during her remaining weeks in the city.

 It should be understandable why I did not rush back to hear DLvdE again after my 1971 experience. However, last year, forty years after the unfortunate events at Café Hawelka, I decided to give it a try. During my stay in Vienna, the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester (Youth Orchestra) was scheduled to play both Mahler’s Eighth Symphony and DLvdE. I bought standing room tickets for the concert and went with a former college roommate, recently retired, who I was helping to see Vienna for the first time. 

Unfortunately, the concert was on a warm April night and the standing room area was packed. The first part of the program was the Eighth Symphony, which I don’t find particularly interesting. As the long symphony was coming to an end, I saw some movement out of the corner of my eye: my friend had fallen backwards, fortunately caught by the people behind him, and was lying unconscious. I immediately thought, “How in the heck do you send a body from Austria to the U.S. It must be complicated.” Then I thought, “Xxx (his wife) is going to be mad at me.”

Fortunately, some nearby folks helped my friend regain consciousness, loosening his tie, fanning him, giving him some water. I was preparing to drag him out to the hallway when he was able to get to his feet. A doctor came and insisted that he get fresh air, so we parked ourselves near a window. After observing him a few minutes, she decided he was fine, just overcome by the heat. When he was sufficiently recovered, and just before the orchestra started playing DLvdE, I went with him to make sure he got back to the apartment without difficulty. I read later that the Mahler Jugendorchester was particularly good that night when they performed DLvdE.

Tonight, my fourth occasion to attend a concert that includes DLvdE in its program, is ripe for disaster. It will be performed by a world class orchestra (the Munich Philharmonic) and conducted by Zubin Mehta, one of the best known conductors in the world.  I will be back in the standing room section where last year’s collapse occurred. It will be crowded on this warm day. I’m not sure what will go wrong, but if you read about some strange disturbance in Vienna’s Musikverein on March 29^th, you should see my name in the story somewhere.

Mrs. Wittenberg's Postcard Album

When Mrs. Rose Marie Eichhorn Wittenberg of Little Rock died in 1961, she left her belongings to her son Walter Wittenberg Jr. Among the things he inherited was an album of postcards from the 1890s through the 1930s. Not long after Walter Jr. died in 1976, Mrs. Wittenberg's postcard album was sold at a garage sale held in the Hillcrest area of Little Rock. I purchased it.

I bought the Wittenberg album mainly because the messages on the postcards were in German, and at the time, I was doing some research on German immigration into Arkansas. As expected, this album, like others that are kept together, helps tell the story of the life of the person who collected the postcards. In this case, the story is about a woman who moved from Dresden, Germany to Little Rock in 1911 to marry Walter Wittenberg, one of the city's leading citizens. I have written a paper about Walter and Marie Wittenberg that is posted on Scribd at this link: http://www.scribd.com/doc/83371653/Walter-Wittenberg-and-Marie-Eichhorn-Wittenberg-The-Lives-of-Two-German-Born-Citizens-of-Little-Rock

The short version of their story is this: Walter Wittenberg arrived in Little Rock in 1865 as a soldier in the Union Army's quartermaster service. Born in 1834, he had come to the United States from Germany with his parents in 1849. They had settled in St. Louis, and he had married in Annie Libby in 1856.  After the Civil War, his wife and son (Frank) had joined him in Little Rock, where he made a successful career as an accountant, book keeper, and banker. In 1869, he had helped created the first building and loan association in Arkansas.

Wittenberg, who had a big house at 518 Broadway, lost his wife to illness in 1883. They had six children together, two of whom died at very young ages and one who died as a teenager. His oldest son, Frank, was a successful accountant in Little Rock, and Frank's son, George, started an architectural firm that still exists.

Marie Eichhorn was born in Saxony in 1877 and spent most of her first thirty years in Dresden. She made two trips to the United States (in 1892 and 1908) before moving here permanently in 1911. She and Walter married sometime in 1911 and had a son, Walter Jr. The senior Walter died suddenly on October 11, 1912. Eight years later, in December 1920, Marie married James E. Hogue, a Little Rock lawyer. They divorced in June 1924, and Marie reclaimed Wittenberg as her last name.

She moved from the house on Broadway to a house in the Hillcrest area of Little Rock in the middle 1920s. After a couple more moves, she settled at 412 Palm Street, where she lived until her death in 1961.  For many years, she attended the First Lutheran Church in downtown Little Rock and was secretary of the women's auxiliary group. At the time of her death, she attended Grace Lutheran Church.

The stories of Walter and Marie are small additions to the history of German immigration into Arkansas. The basic facts of Mrs. Wittenberg's life are illuminated and made more interesting by the postcards in her album.  Below are a few of the more interesting cards:

The postcard above celebrates an arts festival held in Dresden in 1905. This postcard shows Marie's address in Dresden in 1905 and her interest in the arts.

 This postcard commemorates a political event that occurred in Dresden on January 1, 1903. Apparently that year a political figure gathered a group of politicians to support him. It was mailed to Marie Eichhorn in 1906.

This unmailed postcard shows the King and Queen of Saxony, which at one time was a kingdom. King Albert held his position from 1873 to 1902. Dresden is located in Saxony and Marie Eichhorn lived there during most of her first three-three years of life.

 This pre-World War I postcard shows the German Kaiser. The postcard is unused.

This postcard apparently was mailed by Marie to herself as a memento of her visit to Paris in 1904. On the front is written: "In remembrance of the last day I was in Paris." At the time, she was living in Leipzig.

 This postcard was sent by a young lady in the United States whom Marie had met during her travels. It is dated 1906.

This postcard is one of two that were given to Marie by Walter Wittenberg. On the back is written: "Received in Dresden from my dear Walter." This card documents the fact that Walter visited Dresden, probably in 1910.

Marie's 1911 trip to the United States is documented in this and another couple of postcards. The writing on the front says that February 1, 1911 was her 13th day on the ocean and the water has been terrible with many storms. She expected to land on February 5th.

Marie had a sister, Hedwig, who lived in Cleveland. She had married Michael Weinhauer in 1895. Hedwig died in Spring, 1912, but Marie kept in touch with her children. Several of Marie's early postcards were sent to her by Hedwig, and several of the later postcards were mailed to her by Hedwig's children. This is an unused postcard.

Several of the postcards in Marie Wittenberg's album have pictures of Arkansas in the 1910's and 1920's. This is an unused postcard in the collection.

The three postcards above are real picture post cards (RPPCs) in Marie Wittenberg's collection. Unfortunately, they are unused (thus, no address) and have no names associated with them. Perhaps the one at the bottom is Walter Wittenberg Jr. as a child.

This final picture is not a postcard, but a photograph that came with them. Perhaps it is a photo of the Wittenberg house at 518 Broadway, Little Rock. No identifying information came with the picture.

Taking Stock II: Eclecticatbest's Most Read Blog Entries

I started this blog in April 2011, mainly as a learning exercise, as an outlet for a bunch of little research projects that I was undertaking, and as encouragement to write with some regularity. With nearly eleven month's experience, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at who is reading the blog and what posts have been the most viewed.

The short answer is that the blog has had over 7,000 page views since its creation. A little over half of the page views were by readers in the United States. The others were by readers in more than twenty different countries. For some reason, Ukraine is the country with the second most number of readers (over 1,000). Canada is third (500 views), and Germany is fourth (266 views).

Before looking to see which individual posts had the greatest number of page views, some background on the blog:  Eclecticatbest.com is hosted by Google blogger. For an extra $25 a year, I pay godaddy.com for my own blog name address. For this payment, I get to use Eclecticatbest.com instead of Eclecticatbest.blogger.com.

The blog is simple to set up and can be customized with no programming knowledge. For example, I wanted my own background for the posts and inserted a picture from my files for that purpose. The picture shows some old Georgia letters on the exterior wall of an ancient church in the Georgia Caucuses. I could do some other things to spiff up the site, but feel no read need to do so.

Posting is simple with blogger.com. Also, it is easy to download pictures into posts. The interface is similar to a word processing program, and you have the ability to preview a post before putting it on-line. It is a good program for people more interested in the content of their posts than in the "look" of their blog.

The blogger site has a "statistics" section that shows the total number of views of the blog by day, week, month, and since the blog's creation. It also shows which browsers were used by readers and, more interestingly, the countries from which readers connected to the blog.  To round out the information, the statistics section shows (1) the website from which readers came to my blog, (2) search words used to find a blog post, and (3) the search engines that were used by readers whose search led them to my blog.

The final information in the statistics section is about the number of page views of each blog entry. A entry is counted as viewed when a reader gets to it by search or by clicking on its title in the blog's index.
Page views of specific entries are not counted when a reader views it on the "landing page" of the blog. The landing page is the page readers get when they type "eclecticatbest.com" to go to the blog. They get a page with the last four or five blog entries. Because lots of blog readers go only to the landing page to read the most recent blogs, the total number of blog page views is much larger than the sum of counted page views of individual entries.

With that caveat, here are the top ten blog entries by number of page views:

305 page views

Austria's Fatherland Front, 1933-1938

August 18, 2011

http://www.eclecticatbest.com/2011/08/austrias-fatherland-front-1933-1938.html

188 pageviews

The Assassination of Engelbert Dollfuss, July 25, 1934

August 2, 2011

http://www.eclecticatbest.com/2011/08/assassination-of-engelbert-dollfuss.html

160 pageviews

Austrian Anschluss: March 1938

April 18, 2011

http://www.eclecticatbest.com/2011/04/austrian-anschluss-march-1938.html

129 page views

Albania for the Adventurous

June 23, 2011

http://www.eclecticatbest.com/2011/06/albania-for-adventurous.html

85 page views

Sand Castle Competition at Birch Bay

June 19, 2011

http://www.eclecticatbest.com/2011/06/sea-castle-competition-at-birch-bay.html

85 page views

Finding M.W. Fodor: Fulbright, Vienna, and Me

September 19, 2011

http://www.eclecticatbest.com/2011/09/finding-m-w-fodor-fulbright-vienna-and.html

84 page views

December 2, 1969: The Night We Drove Old Dixie Down (and Didn't Even Know It)

May 24, 2011

http://www.eclecticatbest.com/2011/05/december-2-1969-night-we-drove-ole.html

67 page views

How Birch Bay Celebrates July 4th

July 4, 2011

http://www.eclecticatbest.com/2011/07/how-birch-bay-celebrates-july-4th.html

58 page views

Early German and Dutch Immigrants in Humorous Posts

May 5, 2011

http://www.eclecticatbest.com/2011/05/old-postcards-provide-glimpse-of.html

For a retired professor who was very happy if a couple hundred people read a research paper of mine published in an academic journal, the large numbers of people who read -- or at least view -- the blog is surprising. These numbers are due in large part to the magic of search engines combined with the fact that someone (me) "showed up" to write the blog entries.  I plan to keep on showing up and seeing what happens.   

Taking Stock: My Scribd Best Sellers

A little over a year ago, I started posting some documents on the Scribd.com website.  All of these documents are accessible at http://www.scribd.com/dan_durning .  I use Scribd because it hosts documents in many different formats, and it is easy both to upload documents and to access them. Also, readers can readily download documents if they wish to read them off-line.

My posted documents fall into one of two types: Those that I have scanned and those that I written. The scanned documents are mainly the Hillcrest Junior High School (Fayetteville, Arkansas) student newspaper (different issues from 1959 to 1962) and the Woodland Junior High School Yearbook (1961 and 1962). The written documents include several fun stories about Fayetteville sports in the early 1960s and some more serious research on German immigration and on Vienna during the interwar period.

The Scribd site keeps statistics on the number of times each of the documents has been accessed. Also, it shows the average time that readers viewed a document when they accessed it. If the average time is a few seconds, it is clear that readers were just quickly looking to see if the document interests them, then clicking rapidly away. Longer average views indicate that most people who access the document actually read them. (The site provides no information identifying readers other than the country in which the readers live.)

The following is a list of the top ten documents by number of views from October 1 to Feb. 18; for each document I also show the average length of time each document was viewed:

Number 1
333 views; time 9:40 (average length of views in minutes:seconds)
The Season of Justin and J.D.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/48613345/The-Season-of-Justin-and-JD

Number 2; time 6:32
298 Views
Bloodlands (Book Review)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/47577036/Bloodlands-Review

Number 3
268 Views; time 1.52
Woodland Junior High School Roundup, 1962 (excerpt)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/48476958/Woodland-Junior-High-School-Roundup-1962-Fayetteville-Arkansas


Number 4
261 Views; time 5:51
Bubba's Nemesis: The Battle for the 1962 Championship of the Fayetteville Babe Ruth League
http://www.scribd.com/doc/59006218/Bubba-s-Nemesis-The-Battle-for-the-1962-Championship-of-the-Fayetteville-Babe-Ruth-League



Number 5
258 Views; time 2:15
Woodland Junior High School Roundup, 1961 (part 1)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/64334228/Woodland-Junior-High-School-Roundup-1961-part-1-Fayetteville-Arkansas

Number 6
249 Views; time 2:01
Hillcrest Indians 1961-1962 Championship Basketball Season
http://www.scribd.com/doc/48142615/Hillcrest-Indians-Fayetteville-Arkansas-1961-62-Championship-Basketball-Season


Number 7
211 Views; time 1:15
Smoke Signals, September 1960 (Hillcrest Junior High School Newspaper)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/49229593/The-Smoke-Signals-September-1960-Hillcrest-Jr-High-Newspaper

Number 8
207 Views; time 5:51
Marcel W Fodor: Foreign Correspondent
http://www.scribd.com/doc/65502558/Marcel-W-Fodor-Foreign-Correspondent

Number 9
191 Views; time 4:09
"Your Husband Starved to Death": 
The Sad Fate of Ernest H Klavon in Koenigsberg, East Prussia
http://www.scribd.com/doc/57803408/Your-husband-starved-to-death-The-Sad-Fate-of-Ernest-H-Klavon-in-Konigsberg-East-Prussia-1945

Number 10
153 Views; time 0:48
Adriano, Rosa, and Dennis Dornik Wash Dishes in Boom-Time Germany
http://www.scribd.com/doc/62108620/Adriano-Rosa-Dennis-Dornik-Wash-Dishes-in-Boom-time-Germany

I expect some more recent postings to catch up with some of these top-ten posts in the next few months. Also, more documents are on the way. I have several research projects in different stages of completion.

Thanks for reading the Scribd documents and the eclecticatbest.com blog.

A Great Night at Cafe Louvre in Vienna

I have never spent a night at Cafe Louvre in Vienna and never will. It is long gone, shut down by Austria's Nazi government in 1940, then destroyed by a bomb during World War II. The building housing the cafe was reconstructed after the war, and a bank took the space where Cafe Louvre had been. Today, the site is occupied by an upscale furniture store.

Cafe Louvre was famous as the hangout in Vienna for foreign correspondents during most of the 1920s and all of the 1930s. When you read their memoirs, you find that it was a place where some of the city's most interesting people met and where news of the Balkans and Central Europe was written.

Though Cafe Louvre no longer exists and memory of it has faded, I can imagine what it looked like in its heyday. And from accounts by the journalists who frequented the cafe during the inter-war years, I can envision what would occurred there in the evenings. 

Reading and working at Cafe Hawelka

In my mind, Cafe Louvre was similar to a combination of two establishments I frequented more than forty years ago: Cafe Hawelka (http://www.hawelka.at/cafe/de/), a traditional Viennese cafe located in the 1st District, near the Graben, and Gasthaus Heidenkummer (http://www.heidenkummer.at/), a neighborhood eatery in the Eighth District.


When I was a customer of Cafe Hawelka in 1967-68 and 1970-71, it was a wood-paneled, no-frills hangout for Viennese intellectuals and students. There, you would find a combination of well-dressed older gentlemen and casually dressed students sitting in booths or on rickety chairs at small, round tables, puffing on cigarettes while reading newspapers or talking. It was at this smoke-filled and crowded cafe in November 1971 that I had a potential girlfriend -- a blond beauty from Arkansas visiting Vienna -- stolen by an Austrian student who looked meaningfully into her eyes as he translated into English the final words of Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde, which she and I had just heard at the Musikverein. She was lost before the last "...ewig...ewig..."

Stammkunden Mitzi (left) and Joerg 
Wollman (center) at Gasthaus 
Heidenkummer in a recent year; 
the Gasthaus is now more upscale 
than in 1971-1972.

Heidenkummer was located around the corner from where I lived on Laudongasse during the 1971-72 academic year. The Wollmann family, from whom I rented a room in their large flat, were stammkunden, long-time and frequent customers, of this modest restaurant with wooden tables, chairs, booths, and walls. It offered solid food and good portions at a reasonable cost, and it was in no way pretentious in its furnishings or decorations. I went often enough to Heidenkummer with Joerg Wollmann -- a young graphic artist who worked at home -- and his wife Mitzi -- a school teacher -- that Willi, the head water, came to sometimes acknowledge my existence, which I considered quite an accomplishment.

Assuming the feel and ambiance of Cafe Louvre in the '20s and 30s resembled that of Hawelka and Heidenkummer in the late 60s and early 70s, I would expect it to be comfortable, well-kept place in which customers felt at home. The waiters would be courteous and efficient, possibly a little condescending to visitors. The chairs and booths would not be especially comfortable, and the air would be polluted with ubiquitous cigarette smoke. At this cafe, I could order not only coffee, but also beer, wine, and hard liquor. To eat, I could request a pastry such as a delicious apple strudel, or I could have soup or even a full meal. We know from Joseph Baird, a journalist who visited Cafe Louvre in the 1930s, that Cafe Louvre's head waiter was Gustav and he "could produce marvelous schnitzel for a mere two marks."  Who could pass that up?

Although I have found only two pictures of Cafe Louvre (one of the interior in 1896), some information exists about how it looked. Ken Cuthbertson, the biographer of journalist John Gunther, a regular guest there from 1930 to 1935, described the cafe thusly:  "The interior was typical. It was spacious, with about forty marble-topped tables and violin-backed chairs in the center of the high-ceilinged room. Along one wall were booths, finished in dark brocades. Along another were a buffet of snacks and pastries and some rattan racks holding the day's newspapers...." [Cuthbertson, Inside: The Biography of John Gunther, 1992, p.108] This set-up sounds similar to the one I remember at Cafe Hawelka.

Of course, what made a night at Cafe Louvre most interesting was not its decor, but the people who came there regularly. You could expect to find regulars such as Robert Best of United Press and M.W. Fodor of the Manchester Guardian there. Best was the man who discovered the charms of Cafe Louvre in 1923 and made it the hangout for international correspondents. Well liked, but considered a little odd, he presided over its activities, many of which took place at his regular table. Every day, he spent most of his time there, even using the Cafe as his mailing address. When Best was sitting in his federal prison cell after his 1948 conviction for treason during World War II, I am sure he fondly recalled his days at the coffee house.

M.W. Fodor, 1939

Fodor. a Hungarian by birth, became a correspondent for the Guardian in 1919, first working out of Budapest and Vienna, then Vienna alone. He covered the Balkans and Central Europe from Vienna until he had to flee on March 12, 1939, as the Germans marched into the country. 

When famous authors William Shirer (Berlin Diary and Rise and Fall of the Third Reich) and John Gunther (Inside Europe) were reporting from Vienna, they were regulars at Cafe Louvre. It is thanks to Gunther that we know as much as we do about the role of Cafe Louvre in the lives of foreign journalists in Vienna during the 1930s. He wrote a 1935 Harper's Magazine article ("Dateline Vienna") about the daily life of a foreign journalist in Vienna, plus he described this life in detail in his fictional, but largely autobiographic novel, The Lost City. He wrote this novel in 1937, but because of his portrayal of some of his Vienna colleagues, lawyers who reviewed the book concluded that it was libelous. It was first published in 1964.

John Gunther, Around 1939

The lively evening conversations at Cafe Louvre were not due only to the working journalists who came there, but also to others who worked for them as stringers or tipsters, plus a mixture of visitors that included journalists passing through town (e.g., Dorothy Thompson, Vincent Sheehan, H.R. Knickerbocker, Edgar Mowrer); well-educated refugees from Central Europe and Balkan Countries who had knowledge and opinions valuable to the journalists; local artists and intellectuals; and, sometimes, spies. 

If I were able to choose a night to drop into the Cafe Louvre, I might pick a night in November 1928 when the folks assembled at Best's Stammtisch included 23-year old J.W. Fulbright, who was spending some months in Vienna after completing his studies at Oxford. Or it might be an evening in January 1934 when young Kim Philby showed up to join the regulars at Best's table. Philby had recently finished his studies at Cambridge and had signed on to work for Comintern (the Communist International); his job as a courier in Vienna was his first assignment as a spy for the Soviet Union. Of course, he later attained a high-level position in British Intelligence while continuing to spy for the USSR. 

Another possibility would be to visit Cafe Louvre on an evening in 1930 when Shirer and Gunther were both journalists in Vienna. Perhaps I could pick a night when Dorothy Thompson and her husband Sinclair Lewis were in town. With those folks sitting at the table, joining Fodor, Best, and the other regulars, I am sure the conversation that evening would fill the head. 

Sitting at Best's table at the Cafe Louvre on any of these three nights, or, I would guess, on most any other night, would make for a great night in Vienna. 




*********************** 

For more on Cafe Louvre, go the link below for the results of my research on the cafe's history:  http://www.scribd.com/doc/81223692/Vienna-s-Cafe-Louvre-in-the-1920s-1930s-Meeting-Place-for-Foreign-Correspondents

Russian Dining in Birch Bay, WA

I have been fortunate to make the acquaintance of the Kiras, Birch Bay residents who retired here after decades of owning and operating restaurants in California and Washington state.
Before coming to the United States in 1978, they were residents of the Soviet Union, living in Odessa for many years. Mr. Kira trained as a chef as the Ukraine Institute of Cooking Arts. Mrs. Kira was raised in Romania, and draws on her childhood memories to inspire her cooking.

The Kiras have published a Russian cook book with hundreds of recipes they used when operating their restaurants. The recipes keep the distinct Russian taste, but are designed to be simple and quick to cook, and to be healthy. The book is printed on high quality paper and is illustrated with many vivid high quality photographs.

The recipes are simple enough that even I can make the dishes. During the Christmas holidays, I made Kira's famous honey nut wish cake, and it turned out perfect -- almost (see picture below). Mr. Kira tells me that I should have saved a few nuts to put on top of the cake.  I can highly recommend this cake.

Honey Nut Wish Cake

I also made a cucumber salad using the recipe in the book and a more complicated vinaigrette salad, which has beets, potatoes, carrots, green pepper, onions, pickles, and a couple of other healthy ingredients.  Truthfully, I had to call my friend Natalia -- who also grew up in the Soviet Union -- for some advice on how to cut up beets, but in the end had an enormous, tasty salad.

Ever so often, I visit the Kiras and am rewarded with a memorable meal. The latest was last Wednesday.  The meal started with a hot  chicken soup with rice. The main menu included the food shown in the picture below.

Russian Lunch on Jan. 19, 2012

Starting from the left, bottom corner, is a fresh, toasted slice of french bread topped with butter and caviar. Next to it, not shown, is another toasted slice of french bread with a homemade cheese spread with a nice garlic and strong goat cheese taste. The dish just above the caviar sandwich is holodets -- a dish that I usually cannot bear to look at, much less force into my piehole. This dish consists of some meat -- often an unthinkable internal organ or sad looking fish -- in a  unappetizing congealed opaque gelatin. For a picture of what holodets (served in Ukraine) is made out of, look at this website: http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/9136/proper-cow-bones-to-prepare-holodets

Many is the time that I tried to force a smile as I dutifully and manfully shoveled a small morsel of holodets into my mouth, managed to swallow it, and complemented the person who had cooked the unspeakable dish. Russians love it, and are surprised when Americans turn white after thinking about eating the first bite.

Fortunately, eating Mrs. Kira's holodets did not require any forced smiles and false praise. It contained  chicken -- shredded white meat -- lodged in a tasty and light jelly-like substance. It was actually edible and not too damn bad.

In the center of main plate is a luscious Chicken Kiev. Mrs. Kira does not believe in stuffing the chicken with some high calorie cheese or the like. Instead, she uses some nice fresh butter. She topped this dish with some sauteed mushrooms. To the left of the Chicken Kiev are two types of piroskys. One is filled with creamed potato stuffing, the other with ground pea stuffing. On the other side of the Chicken Kiev, are some nice roasted potatoes with a light coating of paprika.

Also in the picture is a mixed salad with several types of veggies to round out the meal.

The Kira's recipe for Chicken Kiev is as follows (this is from their cookbook):

The desert for the meal -- not shown -- was a delicious chocolate pie made with a thin crust and sweetened with honey.  It can be eaten with either the red wine or hot tea.

For those who want to make a simple, tasty cake that is not too sweet, here is the recipe for the honey nut cake pictured above (the one even I can make):

If you have an interest in making Russian dishes, you can buy the Kira's book on Amazon.  It is available at this link:  http://www.amazon.com/Unique-Traditional-Russian-Cooking-Michael/dp/B0066QI996/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1327209884&sr=8-3
The book is being sold by Birch Bay Books which is a subsidiary of Eclectic (At Best).